Brooklyn Families Scrutinize the Close to Home Proposal*
NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) held the Brooklyn community forum for the Close to Home program March 13 at NYCHA Van Dyke Community Center. The overcrowded condition had its good point and detraction. It was encouraging to see the range of ages in the packed room and the involvement of the audience during the community discussion segment. Given this was Brooklyn’s only community forum for Close to Home, NYCHA Brooklyn Community Operations ought to have chosen a NYCHA facility that had triple Van Dyke’s capacity. Suggested alternatives would be Penn-Wortman or Louis Pink Houses’ community center. The depth in consideration for the forum’s location underscored the depth of consideration into the Close to Home program.
The event’s first few stages described this alternative to upstate detention of juveniles and built a clear framework for community input. Close to Home’s goal is to direct the majority of detained NYC youth to rehabilitation, supervision, and confinement to services near their families, rather than facilities hundreds of miles from New York City. Family members can more easily visit them and educational attainment is a key element. ACS Commissioner Ronald Richter extolled a screening tool that guages the level of detention required for each juvenile that reduces the number in confinement.
Close to Home is State legislation pending voting. If passed, New York City can do operational planning. The people’s questions revealed the community’s insight into family dysfunction, juvenile delinquency, disaffection with public school curricula, and inadequacies of city agencies serving youth. There were instances of ACS staff not responding directly to questions and admission of not considering certain events yet, being consistent in needing the community’s input, especially that coming from young people.
One young man revealed that he’d been confined three times as a minor. He spent time at Bristol, Lincoln Hall and Boys Town. He found the Upstate facilities had more structure than Boys Town which is located in downtown Brooklyn. He admitted he needed structure. Adults who were parents, nonprofit staff members or part of the clergy raised questions about adequate funding and a wholistic approach that helped families with adjudicated youth. When asked how much money would be saved by providing services in NYC rather than Upstate, ACS Commissioner Richter stated he didn’t know the cost because it has been a State expense. His goal is reducing the numbers in detention. The forum attendees learned from another concerned citizen that NYS expended $240,000 per youth annually at Upstate facilities.
This session revealed people were concerned with resolving claims of
educational neglect in the face of teens who are determined to be truant. The program’s efficacy is in question given ACS has reduced the number of caseworkers and there is a need for parent advocates and youth advocates. While the Commissioner stated costs weren’t a part of this discussion, the people wanted to talk dollars. One nonprofit manager who had spent 16 years behind bars and now held a doctorate requested that NYC Department of Education and ACS put their funds together to allow funded community-based organizations to conduct intervention programs within public schools.
ACS asked a teen how to improve school. The young man attempted an answer; however, he was at a disadvantage because he can only talk about what he’s been exposed to. The more exposure to history,
STEM, and global studies from direct experience, school, and other sources, the better anyone can talk about what is lacking. What pupils or truants can adequately talk about is the affect of the teaching-learning environment. This is why youth make such statements as “school is boring.” The community forums will be held in each borough. The Queens forum was scheduled for March 14; the Manhattan forum is scheduled for March 16;Staten Island's forum is scheduled for March 26; and The Bronx forum is slated for April 2.
*Most names withheld due to no prior knowledge of media coverage.
Labels: ACS, DOE, families, juvenile detention, New York City, NYC Ho, parent advocacy, urban
The Early Learn NYC concept paper dramatically alters how child care and early childhood education services are delivered to New York City’s lower income families. In fact, the requirement of enrolling parents who can afford out of pocket Early Childhood Education expenses indicates a move toward serving a more affluent sector of the city. Current ACS-funded programs need to ask whether, in the future, a specified percentage of slots will be allocated for market rate families. It would bring clarity if the concept paper provided the rationale for including unsubsidized households into a service designed to give lower income parents the ability to go to school or work, knowing their infant,toddler or preschooler is in a safe, clean, mentally and physically stimulating environment.
The paper reveals a concern for greater capacity of each funded program through the exclusion of family day care and group family day care providers who are unable to merge into a network; contract awards as high as $20 million for serving 2,000 children and having the resources and staff expertise to serve infants, special needs and English language learners at one center. These requirements assume that a center will be funded such that it can pay appropriate salaries for specialty educators. Further, are there existing NYC-based programs that can manage $20 million operations?
New York City’s need for subsidized child care is substantiated when one looks at the percentage of households receiving some form of income support assistance by community districts and the percentage of the population who is five years of age and younger. There are community districts wherein 30 – 40% of residents are such recipients. So, then, why does it occur that some programs are consistently under-enrolled? Some professionals explain that the certification process is taking too long. If this is true then, the Full Enrollment Initiative must include provisions to quicken the process. Without a clear study of the enrollment/certification throughput, the pre-enrollment activities that centers and networks perform will result in backlog.
Early Learn NYC is a competitive model. There will be at least 50 fewer programs serving NYC. On the other hand those who are awarded will learn to diversify their funding base; serve children of differing talents; initiate aggressive cooperative and individual marketing campaigns and activate sponsoring boards to engage in strategic planning and resource development.
Labels: ACS, Bloomberg, childcare, infants
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Client Impostor
Though communications is my preference, I take on government funding applications for clients in need. The trouble is knowing new clients from impostors: people who want to pick brains. If you're in business it's part of the business. Going through introductions with someone who really should just ask for advice and pay for the hour.
This short week I encountered one--an impostor--who wanted to learn how to put a service proposal together. She's been asked by a supposed Domincan music sensation to do work for him. This was revealed while getting to know one another. This was supposed to be a sweetener for staying close to her because more jobs were around the corner for me. She's a director of day care center and a food pantry. I'm not swayed by "jobs around the corner or up the road." One paid engagement at a time.
The job was getting funding to embellish her pantry program with equipment, supplies and necessary NYC Dept. of Health repairs. Something was fishy
because her office was in a shambles. NYC-funded day care centers are visited by the
Dept of Health,
Fire Dept and
ACS program monitors. A disorganized director's office would be a write-up that needed immediate correction. The public may have doubts about ACS but they're very good about semi-annual program assessments.
The other tool that tipped me off was her cell phone. I couldn't get the make but it was a longer, sleek, silver-toned model. She fondled it frequently when we met in her office. She contacted me from it and it was the only number she gave me, though she called from the faith-based learning center.
The deal was for me to email her the service proposal later that day. It was much later that day because there was other work that came before her job. She didn't want me to take the funding announcement nor could she make a copy of it for me. It took her a moment to accept that I needed the announcement to write what needed to be done and draft the proposal. We were to meet the following day to get the retainer, see the pantry area and define its needs.
The next day came, no call from her. I call her on her sleek cell but go to voice mail. I call a few hours later and get put into voice mail again. I pull out "the dinosaur", a dictionary, to get the ground line. Key in the digits, the phone rings and it's the director who answers the phone. Wouldn't you know it: she just got in the office. What happened to the cell phone? Don't they work out on the street?
The long and short of it is that we did meet later that day. Her files were in a state that she couldn't find any information--not even her EIN or award ID #. She couldn't explain the pantry program because she felt rushed. She was booked for "the D.R." the next day. She wasn't sure whether she was going because she had two other reports that were past due. She needed to call me with her decision. What was there to think about? Papers and books were falling on the floor, file cabinet drawer stuffed with folders and her desk piled with things. It looked like her PC had Office 2003 or 2007. She had her sleek, silver-toned cell phone in hand, though.
I asked her to walk me to the door. I didn't want to be late for my job. When I finally got home that night, before shutting down my PC, I checked my email to delete unwanted items. What did I see? A message from a CEO. "...Yes, he wanted to meet to learn how traditional PR and
Web 2.0 would advance his cause."
Labels: ACS, bad management, cell phone, day care, ground line, NYC Dept of health, NYC Fire Dept., something-for-nothing
